THIS BLOG
Swans were *predictably* white until Black Swans were found in Australia. This blog discursively tracks them from the Tulip Mania of 1637 through to the GFC: an Inside Job from contributors in the US, France, and Australia. In English and French.

Black Swans
[Posts in English]
Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a 'Black Swan' as "an event with the following 3 attributes:
- it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, causing a 'cognitive bias' because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
- it carries an extreme impact.
- human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."
In other words these Black Swans are the Global Credit Crisis and its sequels, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the 2013 horse meat scandal in Europe, and so on...